


call out my name (i want you to stay)

by ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Genre: F/M, Gen, Medical Trauma, medical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25515862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly/pseuds/ussihavelovedthestarstoofondly
Summary: The Jedi cruiser Courageous is completely engulfed in flames by the time it crashes onto the surface of Cato Neimoidia. Anakin and Fives were just minutes too late for her. Minutes too late in pulling the plug and blowing Tipoca City to pieces, destroying the chip control center.
Relationships: Commander Wolffe x Reader
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	call out my name (i want you to stay)

**Author's Note:**

> Medical gore and trauma in this kids. Be safe.  
> Hurt/comfort

The Jedi cruiser  _ Courageous  _ is completely engulfed in flames by the time it crashes onto the surface of Cato Neimoidia. Anakin and Fives were just  _ minutes  _ too late for her. Minutes too late in pulling the plug and blowing Tipoca City to  _ pieces _ , destroying the chip control center. 

Too _ late  _ for her. And almost too late for Plo Koon. 

Wolffe spent days searching the burning, smouldering wreckage. He can’t  _ find _ her. He won’t listen to his vod, to his jetti-buir. He  _ needs _ to find her. 

Or at least, find her body. Bring her home. Begin  _ atonement  _ for what he’s done. He doesn’t know where he is right now, lying in some sterile medbay on some ship that Plo Koon doesn’t command. 

Sinker is asleep in the chair next to his bed, boots settled nicely on the floor and feet propped on Wolffe’s medical cot. 

Wolffe knows Plo has been here; the half-empty cup of tea sitting on the small table is plenty evidence. Wolffe thinks that Plo couldn’t have forgiven him. Wolffe doesn’t  _ deserve _ it. Not after what he  _ did _ to you. 

Wolffe closes his eyes as Sinker starts stirring, shifting in the seat. Wolffe can’t face his brother yet, can’t acknowledge what he  _ ordered  _ him and his other vod’ika to do. 

_ “Im going to recommend him for his trials when I return from Cato Neimoidia.”  _

_ “Do you think he’s ready?” A laugh—soft—warm, a spring breeze.  _

_ “Over protective, kair’ta? I’ve trained him as best I can. There’s no use in hanging on, is there?” Silent words spoken into the quiet, safe space between them. Reassurance. Comfort. Safety.  _

Sinker doesn’t fall for Wolffe’s weak attempt at hiding; he reaches out and wraps his hand tight around his commander’s. 

_ “I got you, ori’vod. I see you.” _ Family. Wolffe squeezes his hand in return. 

***

_ Drip _ . 

_ Drip _ . 

_ Drip _ . 

Blood. It must be blood, right? Of course it is. Nothing else can be that  _ red _ .

Smoke. Overheated blasters. The reeking stench of ship’s fuel. 

_ “Vod, what’s wrong?”  _ A name and face. Lancing pain deep in the left side of a chest, behind the bone and sinew. A boy. A boy was all he was. She whispers her padawan’s name. It sounds like the dying hiss and pop of a fire doused in water. 

Pain. Agony. Flaring across the back of her skull. She reaches up, pressing against it. Was that blood always on her hand? 

_ “Your lightsaber is your life. Don’t lose it.”  _ Where’s her saber? Can she reach it? She twists, sees the metal walkway of a ship illuminated by flashes and sparks. The ship is warped and twisted like some kind of demented monster. 

Her lightsaber lays shattered just beyond the reach of her fingers, kyber crystal pulsing a weak, tepid blue, and within the midst of the shattered hilt, lies her heart. Plo Koon wasn’t with her, was he? Where’s Kailem? Was Anakin with her? Where’s Wolffe? 

“Wolffe.” The name is a bullet dropping into the firing chamber, the safety clicking off on a DC-15. Why did the ship go down?

The grey and the red and the flashes spiral together, a kaleidoscope of fracturing light.  _ Dripping _ ,  _ running _ , a painting with water sprayed on it. 

Cannons. Fire. Screaming, but was it metal or  _ human _ ? 

“Kailem.” The order to a soldier for proof of life, a plea of a mother praying that she didn’t outlive her child. 

“Master.” The word is broken, shattered, fracturing and sliding across the floor in the same way her lightsaber is. 

“You need to get out,” she says. The young Togrutan shakes his head where he’s kneeling next to her. Agony flares, sparks, explodes, shatters along her head and neck and spine as she turns her head to look at him. 

“No,” he says. “Not without you. Not while you are alive.” She licks her lips, tastes the iron and in it tries to find the strength to speak in it. 

“No time. The engines broke.” She squeezes her eyes shut, coughs and tries to pulls her thoughts into order. She knows she’s trying to warn her padawan, and she knows the message has to be clear. The agony is staning her thoughts, making the murky and hard to decipher. “The room will fill with toxic gas, is filling as we speak.” She clenches her jaw, slowly breathing in through her nose. “Get out, Kailem,” she demands, voice quiet. She glances to where his gaze has landed, settled. There’s a large piece of steel that has slammed through her leg and is pinning her to the deck. 

“Not without you. Get ready to move, Master.”

“I can’t.” 

“You can, and you  _ will,” _ Kailem says, voice tight with concern and worry. He knows she doesn’t give up, _ —never _ has—and it’s concerning that she’s willing to start now. 

With the groan of an ancient, exhausted beast the ship heaves, buckles, and  _ screams _ as Kailem lifts the metal off of her leg. 

She’s not sure where the willpower comes from; there’s no strength left in her. She’s sure it all must have bled out onto the floor, similar to the pool of crimson next to her. She’s pretty sure it’s hers. 

The world tilts as she manages to roll her bleeding, half dead and mangled body just far enough that she isn’t under the metal as it crashes down with a final groan. 

The blackness lurking in the back of her head, a cold and dark reminder of the horrors that echoed off this ships walls. The betrayal, the obliteration of self and free will, suddenly rushes forward and—like drowning victims pulled by the merciless, vindictive currents of the ocean—she has no choice but to lay down and surrender to its power. 

***

“Wolffe.” Plo’s hands have always been gentle and—Wolffe suspects—they always will be. Right now, they’re firm as they grab his shoulders. Plo leans his forehead against Wolffe’s to try, desperately, to make his commander see that Plo doesn’t blame him—never has and  _ never will _ —that he still loves him. That if Kailem and his jetti were here they’d feel the same way. 

Wolffe trusts Plo implicitly. Plo was the one who spent the time taking apart the wall that Wolffe built around himself. Plo worked for weeks slowly taking that wall apart—piece by piece—to get Wolffe to see that even with a cybernetic eye he was still  _ valuable  _ as a soldier and, more importantly, as a person. 

The argument that Wolffe’s value as a person did not reside in his abilities to fight as a soldier was an argument that Plo had decided could wait for another time. 

So when Plo tells Wolffe that she wouldn’t blame him—that Kailem wouldn’t blame him—Wolffe wants to believe him. 

But he, along with the other clones, can’t remember anything of what happened. Wolffe doesn’t know if he was kissing her, if they were having coffee when he shot her. 

Or even if  _ he _ shot her. Did Sinker? Did Boost? It was a secret to no one that Boost saw her as a mother, saw Kailem as a little brother to protect and tease and guide. 

What if Wolffe had shot Kailem in front of her? Wolffe had never been a ‘people person’ and that had come across in his first meeting with Kailem. The Togrutan had been very young then—just barely twelve years old—and for some reason Wolffe’s negative reaction to him had been what spurred Kailem to attach himself to Wolffe’s hip. 

Kailem had helped the Wolf Pack paint their armor when their colors changed from red to grey. 

Kailem has snuck him caff, sugar, and the best burger Wolffe swears he’s ever eaten while he was in the Jedi Halls of Healing after Ventress took his eye. 

It makes him almost physically sick to think that he shot Kailem. 

No one was surprised when Kailem accidentally called Wolffe ‘buir’ in the middle of a fire-fight. She had just smiled at Wolffe then and turned back to the battle field. 

Sometimes, during the war watching her interact with Kailem Wolffe thinks that yes, he wants a future after the war; he wants it so badly he can practically smell the lavender that she’ll plant in garden beds under the windows of a little cabin that they’ll buy. He wants a future with her—peace and safety—and maybe one day he’ll talk to her about having kids. He hears his brothers talk about their ideas of ‘after’ and what it means to them in the deepest, darkest part of early mornings when it’s too quiet in the barracks for sleep. 

Plo and his jetti actively  _ encourage  _ them to think about what they’re going to do after. Wolffe knows she got Sinker philosophy books from the Jedi temple and they discussed philosophy and art together. 

When he was alone with her, she never asked him. She’d encourage Sinker, Boost, and Warthog all to think about  _ after _ . The war can’t go on forever, she would remind them. Wolffe thinks she must have sensed his anxiety over it, the way he practically recoiled whenever his brothers would talk about it, and therefore she never asked. Wolffe never offered even though he did think about it. 

He thought about a little cottage somewhere remote, away from people. And somewhere warm. Naboo, maybe. They’d build it on the lake, and he’d build a nice dock. He would fish off of it, and she could mediate from a spot that he’d build her on shore, right near the water where the gentle lap of waves would help lull her into peace. And maybe he’d get over his distaste of water enough to swim with her. She'd grown up near water, had learned to respect and cherish it rather than fear it. 

But he’d never offered that to her. 

He’d never offered to her how Kailem felt like a son to him, and how with her, and only her, he’d like to talk about kids. One, maybe two, a way to fill their little cottage with sun and laughter even on the rainiest of days, a veritable, living proof that he was a person deserving of love and happiness. Proof that even though the war had tainted him, had stained him down to his bones with blood and soot and guilt that won’t ever wash off, he can still make something fundamentally  _ good _ . 

And now he’ll never get that. His wife—his Jedi—their son is buried somewhere deep in the belly of the  _ Courageous _ , a burning twisted husk of a thing that sits on Cato Nemodia like a monster that swallowed two Jedi whole. 

***

She’s outside of  _ Courageous _ when she wakes up, that much she knows. The next thing she knows is that Kailem must have found some sort of medkit. She feels the bacta swimming in her veins, making her sluggish. 

“Master,” Kailem’s voice whispers, and he’s kneeling next to her, setting wires and a control panel down between them. 

“What are you doing?” She asks. 

“Not important,” he says. “How are you feeling?” She wants to lie to him, tell him that she feels  _ fine  _ and that it’s no big deal. But that’s a lie and they both know it. Even after years in a war zone, she still can’t get over her desire to shelter him, to pretend that he had some semblance of a childhood. 

“Not good,” she settles on. A depreciating grin slides across Kailem’s face. 

“Guess all that extra studying in the Halls of Healing didn’t do much, Master,” he says. She shakes her head, wincing at the pain. 

“Nonsense.” She gestures to her left leg, wrapped in bandages and roughly propped up on pieces of what looks like it was—once upon a time—a piece of ship wall. “That alone should have killed me, nevertheless the gas.” 

“I wouldn’t leave you, Master. Not when there was a chance for both of us.” 

“When you get back, tell them I want you to take your trials.”

“When  _ we  _ get back,” Kailem says. She lets it go, doesn’t tell him she feels  _ something  _ setting deep into her blood, wrapping itself tight against her bones, in the cavities in her chest. She should tell him that she’s dying, that something in the ship when it exploded is slowly eroding her but she doesn’t. She’ll keep it to herself. 

She has learned many things about her Padawan over the years. His Master’s impending death is something Kailem will have to learn, to come to terms with, the hard way. 

“What happened? Why did the ship crash?” Kailem doesn’t answer, just turns back to his tinkering. 

The sun on Cato Neimoidia is setting, slowly. Another marker of a day of survival, a day closer to death. In the slowly waning light of Cato Nemodia’s sunset, both Master and Padawan are keeping dangerous secrets. 

***

It’s been seventeen days. Seventeen days since Anakin and Fives  _ failed, _ and the chips were activated. Kailem doesn’t know if they eventually succeeded, just minutes too late, but he’s not willing to take that chance. Not with his master so injured. 

At this point though, watching her shiver and shake through another fevered nightmare—calling out words Kailem doesn’t recognize and names he doesn’t know—he doesn't know how to move forward or even how to keep them alive. Kailem thinks there isn’t any way his Master will survive to the eighteenth day. 

She’d lied to him on that first day outside the ship. Something had been wrong, and—even if she hadn’t known  _ what  _ it was—she still hadn’t told him that it was  _ something.  _

Of course, he hadn’t told her about how the ship crashed, about how he’s not sure that Plo survived. Kailem had hiked to his grandmaster’s ship. It didn’t seem like he could have survived, but Plo’s a Jedi. Kailem knows that It’s foolish—and childish—to hold out hope for Plo’s survival but he can’t help it as he watches his Master slowly fall away from him and deeper into the infection running through her system. 

She had thrown him into a room and slammed the blast doors shut, cutting their locking mechanism so the clones couldn’t get in. By extension Kailem hadn’t been able to get out through the doors. He’d cut through the ceiling, into the air vents to escape. 

Kailem had followed her force-signature after and had pulled her out of the damaged and destroyed ship before disappearing into the trees. Less than an hour later, as Kailem had watched from the safety of the trees, the clones had started sweeping for survivors. Kailem had wanted to run to the men he had considered friends and brothers and beg them for help but he wasn't willing to take the risk of the chips still being active, and the soldiers killing him. 

His Master’s head had been split open in the back, and there had been three puncture wounds in her leg. When Kailem had cut open her leggings he had found three gaping wounds. One was four inches above the knee and based on his studies in the Halls of Healing Kailem would guess that it entered her leg mere centimeters from her femoral artery. Kailem also assumed that the metal had nicked the femoral vein because of the sheer amount of blood Kailem had found around her. The second wound was where a rod had stabbed directly through her knee and had broken her knee cap on its way through her knee and to the floor. Her knee cap now sits in four pieces in the mangled knee joint. The final wound is one barely an inch below her knee, stabbed through between her tibia and fibula. 

He glances out towards where the smoking body of the ship rests, a decimated reminder of the family he used to have. 

If he thinks too hard, Kailem is sure he’ll cry. He’s running low on supplies for her, not that they’ve been doing any good as evidenced by how the black tracking from her leg wounds keeps creeping farther and farther along her leg, closer to her torso and heart. He's almost out of the meager amount of food he’d gathered from the  _ Courageous  _ before picking his Master up and  _ running _ . 

The radio he’s working on is his last hope. There’s nothing left for him or her on the  _ Courageous  _ and Kailem isn’t so naive as to think that another Jedi-friendly ship will be passing through soon. The repair of the radio is taking so long because Kailem is trying to encode it, to ensure that if it  _ does  _ fall into the wrong hands they won’t know what it means, and will be unable to track the origin location of the transmission. 

***

_ Wolffe is sure that this kid has got to be the worst thing that has ever happened to him. He knew her getting a Padawan was always a high probability that grew even higher as the war went on and the Jedi became desperate for more Knights, but Wolffe didn’t think the Padawan would be so young.  _

_ Kailem is barely twelve the first time he and Wolffe meet, and Wolffe isn’t… kind to the young Togrutan. In fact, he’s extremely snappy and dismissive as he scowls his way through their interaction, so he’s not sure why Kailem has decided to attach himself so tightly to Wolffe.  _

_ But right now, the young Padawan is sitting quietly in the corner of Wolffe’s office, staring at the walls. Wolffe is sure that, at Kailem’s age, Wolffe never would have been that still.  _

_ “Seriously, kid, why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be with General Kenobi?” Wolffe asks. Kailem just shrugs, looking at his feet.  _

_ “Well…” the boy starts. Wolffe waits. “General Kenobi had to go do something with General Skywalker and he said I couldn’t come and I’d already finished my studies and I want my Master to come back—” Kailem cuts off and Wolffe is sure that that last little tidbit wasn’t supposed to slip out. Jedi aren’t supposed to have attachments, after all. She threw that out the window though in favor of Wolffe: marrying him and loving him.  _

_ Wolffe feels himself soften a little at the apparent sadness and distress in the boy in front of him. He’s been missing his Master, and he came to Wolffe for comfort. Wolffe misses her, too. He spends his free time counting down the days and hours until she’s back from her diplomatic mission, and Wolffe can sneak her away for dinner and maybe, if there’s time, sex. Of course, Wolffe respects her Jedi duties and her duties to her Padawan, always has and always will.  _

_ “You hungry, kid?” He asks. Kailem shrugs.  _

_ “Yeah,” he admits. Wolffe stands, abandoning the reports at his desk.  _

_ “Come on, Kai. Let's get some food.” Kailem bolts up, practically scrambling to fall in line next to Wolffe. Wolffe thinks the kid really must miss her, and Wolffe doesn’t blame him.  _

_ “It’s probably not gonna measure up to what they feed you in that fancy Jedi temple, but it’s food,” Wolffe tells him. Kailem just shrugs, scooting closer to Wolffe as they walk through the GAR barracks towards the mess hall. Kailem’s shoulder keeps brushing Wolffe’s arm as they walk.  _

_ The other clones hardly spare the Commander and the Padawan a look.  _

_ “I hate diplomacy,” Kailem tells him. Wolffe reaches out and squeezes his shoulder gently.  _

_ “Me too, Kai. Me too.”  _

***

It’s sometime deep in the black hours of the night, the deepest black that eats the pitiful light cast out of the door of their meager shelter by the lantern Kailem has, when his Master opens her eyes for the first time in thirty-six hours. 

“Kailem,” she says, reaching out and laying her hand over his. He just turns his hand to hold hers, tightly. Every time the sun rises he’s surprised that she’s still here, still clinging on. 

“Tell Wolffe I love him. And know that I am so, so proud of you.” Kailem scoots closer to her, brushes some sweaty hair off of her forehead. She’s shivering again. The fever must be rising. 

“He knows,” Kailem says. She squeezes his hand. 

“He  _ needs _ the reminder. As do  _ you _ .” Kailem doesn’t say anything, and it’s not long before she slips under again. Kailem swears that has to be the last time she’ll wake up. 

He turns his attention to his radio. It’s not working—not really—but it’s transmitting once every fifteen minutes a specific message. He knows that if anyone friendly is listening they’ll understand. 

***

_ “Kailem.” Kailem freezes at the sound of his Grandmaster’s voice. He hadn’t meant to wake him up, but he just can’t get comfortable. Kailem’s Master is asleep next to him, head resting against Wolffe’s thigh plate and outer robe wrapped tight around her.  _

_ “Sorry, Master,” Kailem whispers. He feels Plo brush his hand across his head, mindful of Kailem’s leku which have been sore and tender this week as they put on visible centimeters in length overnight.  _

_ “Sleep, child. You must gain your strength.” Kailem nods, and shifts to curl closer to his Master, to rest his head on her stomach. She shifts, murmurs something in her sleep, but doesn’t wake up.  _

_ Plo closes his eyes again, and soon Kailem is alone again except for the night watch man whose rounds keep him out of Kailem’s field of view.  _

_ The young Togrutan shifts, readjusts his head on his Master’s stomach, and then shifts again when a rock digs into his thigh. He feels his head follow the steady rise and fall of her breathing, and closes his eyes.  _

_ He shifts around again a few minutes later, waking his Master up.  _

_ “Kailem,” she murmurs, shifting away from Wolffe to roll on her stomach, “Go to sleep. Stop moving.”  _

_ By now, Kailem is acutely aware that many of the clones are awake, startled out of their light sleep by the fussing of their Jedi.  _

_ Kailem tries very, very hard to hold still, but he has to shift again when the ground under him seems to seep all of the heat out of him.  _

_ He’s a little more than startled when a pair of gloved hands grab his shoulders, and he’s swiftly and effectively hauled onto white and grey composite armor, with Wolffe wrapping his arms tightly around him.  _

_ “Stop kriffing moving, Kai,” Wolffe growls. Wolffe is the only one who calls him that, and Kailem grins into the small space between the Commander’s helmet and pauldron.  _

_ “Yes, Commander,” Kailem mutters. He hears Plo cough to cover a laugh, something several clones do as well. Although he can’t see it, he can feel his Master’s grin permeating through the force.  _

_ *** _

Far, far away from Cato Neimoidia, deep in the Jedi Temple, Plo Koon stands next to Commander Wolffe as they listen to a series of beeps come through the receiver. It is an old, old code buried deep in the halls of the Jedi Archives. Plo only knows it because his ex-Padawan had taught it to him, and she learned it from  _ her  _ Padawan. Well, she’d given the manual on how to use it to Kailem and told him to learn it one night in a desperate act one evening for some peace while Kailem studied. Wolffe had laughed at her desperation and reminded her that she had been as eager and energetic as Kailem when she was a Padawan. 

Kailem had then taught the entire Wolf Pack the old code. 

_ “Stop Kriffing Moving Kai”  _ beeps out through the transmitter. 

“They’re alive. Or at least Kai is,” Wolffe tells him. Plo nods. 

“I believe it would be safer to assume that Kai is alive and that she, if alive, is incapacited after all Kailem was clearly the one to send the message.” 

“Kai is alive. She might be. Let’s  _ go _ ,” Wolffe begs, staring at his General. 

“I believe Kenobi’s ship is leaving soon. We’ll catch a ride and get some help from him,” Plo says. 

Wolffe won’t look at Plo Koon as they walk towards the  _ Negotiator.  _ If she is dead… well that’s Wolffe’s fault, after all.  _ He  _ gave the order to his men. He was the one who drove her to whatever means she went to inorder to keep Kailem safe. 

As they walk Wolffe crosses his arms, tucking his right hand under his left arm to press his fingers against the plastoid armor under which lies a tattoo, one he’d got on their wedding night. 

***

_ She had thought that she’d get a lecture from Wolffe after the... stunt that’d she’d pulled with the pirates, but the way he’d slammed his hand on the control panel making the LAAT/i door slide close with a pneumonic hiss. The way he works to yank his codpiece off makes her think that she’ll be getting something much better than a lecture. She reaches up and undoes her cloak, letting it drop to the floor.  _

_ “That shit you just pulled?” Wolffe asks her. She tilts her head, reaching to unhook his kama when he gets closer to her. “Was hot, I will not deny that.” She just grins, letting his cuirass fall to the floor as she steps closer to him. Wolffe grabs her chin, fingers tight as he tilts her head up. “And also furiating. Taking on an entire pirate den without your saber? Are you stupid?”  _

_ “Not stupid. Angry. Worried for my family. For Kailem. For you. I will protect you at any cost.” Wolffe sighs, presses his forehead against hers. He can’t argue when he knows he’d say the same thing, so instead one of his hands sinks into her hair, fingers tightening. He yanks her head back, and his other hand going to the buckle on the belt that holds her sabers.  _

_ “Doesn’t cause me any less worry,” he growls as the belt and sabers drop to the LAAT/i floor with a harsh clank, and then he’s pressing into her, pressing his mouth against hers with bruising force. Wolffe’s hand falls to her hips, grabbing and squeezing as he shoves her bodily backwards until she’s slamming against the side of the LAAT/i. “You need to be reminded what you have to come home to.” _

_ “Think Sinker will keep my kid-” she cuts off in a low moan as Wolffe sinks his teeth into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, one hand still firmly in her hair as the other squeezes her ass. He slides his hand down to get a grip behind her knee, yanking it up and over his hip.  _

_ “Long enough for me to work two orgasms out of you,” Wolffe tells her. She laughs, low and warm.  _

_ “Cocky, aren’t you?” Another moan punches out of her as he rolls his hips against hers, showing her how, despite himself, he liked her show of dedication and loyalty to her family.  _

_ “I know what you like,” he tells her. She hums and then gasps as he sinks his teeth into another spot on her neck below where her robes sit.  _

_ “That you do,” she murmurs. Wolffe grins and rolls his hips into hers again. She puts her hand on his shoulders and shoves him back far enough to unclip and shove his cuirass off and it clunks on the floor.  _

_ “Off,” she demands, yanking on the top of his blacks. Wolffe groans as he rolls his hips into hers again. He lets her leg drop back to the floor to step back enough to divest the rest of his upper armor, peeling off the top of his blacks as well.  _

_ She’s grinning, reaching her hands out to pull him back to her. She brushes her hands over his ribs, her fingers tracing the tattoo on his left side.  _

_ “I like this tattoo,” she murmurs. Wolffe wants to fuck her, but he will never shirk her softer touches and affection. Wolffe craves the little touches, the soft moments of intimacy that she gives him. He’ll keep all of them for later, for cold nights on the battlefield when all he wants to do is hunker down with her.  _

_ “Yeah?” he asks because he’ll get around to the sex, but he wants to draw more affection out of her first.  _

_ “Yes. It shows everyone that you’re mine, that you’re under my protection, that no one can touch you.” On his left ribs the hilt of her saber has been tattooed there, a physical reminder of her love and devotion, a way for Wolffe to keep her with him when she wasn’t there.  _

_ “No one else around?” Wolffe mutters as his hands drift to her waist band. He snaps the band over her hip, and she pinches his hip in retaliation.  _

_ “No. Hangar is empty. Will be until pilots start rounding at oh-six-hundred,” she says. Wolffe slides his hand into her pants.  _

_ “Good,” he murmurs.  _

***

Wolffe is more than startled when Kailem freezes in front of him, eyes flicking between Wolffe’s face and his blaster, lightsaber humming as he waits. 

“Are you ok?” Wolffe finally says, and—to his surprise—Kailem launches forward, arms wrapping tight around the Commander. 

“She needs help. I don’t… I can’t…” 

“We have medics. We’ll get her home,” Wolffe says, arms tight around the young Torgrutan. 

“Ok, buir,” Kailem murmurs, and Wolffe tightens his arms around the young man. 

***

“It is practically a miracle,” Sariel the healer tells them, “that Kailem was able to keep her alive long enough for her to return home.” 

Plo looks at his padawan lying on the bed. He can see at least three IVs, what Plo remembers is called an endotracheal tube that’s connected to the machine currently breathing for her, plus a tube snaking out from under the covers. Plo doesn’t know what that tube is, only that occasionally black, semi-liquid material gets pulled through it, and Plo isn’t entirely sure he  _ wants _ to know what it is. 

“Look at these,” the healer tells him, Kailem, and Wolffe, pulling up images on a data pad. 

“It’s eaten her bones,” Kailem says. The healer’s face falls. She was Kailem’s instructor, Plo remembers and he assumes they must have remained good friends. 

“Sariel, what is her chance of surviving?” Kailem asks, staring at the image stained black where the caustic engine fuel of the ship has infected and slowly eaten away at her. 

It has been a very long time since Plo has felt a true need to protect his Padawan. He has felt worry and fear from when she was a headstrong independent and stubborn young woman. But true fear for her? No, he hasn’t felt that in years, yet it slams into him now full force. 

One of their first missions together had been to find a man smuggling spice into Coruscant—spice that had been manufactured wrong and had killed many, many people—and the chase led them higher and higher above Coruscant’s buildings. Now—just as it did when Plo had helplessly watched her fall over the edge of the ship high in Coruscant’s atmosphere—he feels fear shoot through his system, wrapping around his spine as it sinks its teeth into his neck.

Plo has to fight back the urge to walk over and wrap her up in a blanket, to make her the one type of tea that she would tolerate for him. They would take the tea to the Archives where they would read about old legends and myths from civilizations long forgotten. They are good memories, ones Plo cherishes and holds close. Something dark and cold settles in Plo’s chest as he thinks about how those may be the last memories he gets of their quiet nights in the Archives. There is so much more of the legends and mythology section that he had wanted to explore with her. 

Plo knows that she did the same thing with Kailem—taking him deep into the Archives, teaching him stories of wonder and adventure from other worlds—and his heart breaks for the young man standing so rigid and brave next to him. 

“Slim to none,” Sariel says. Plo watches Kailem close his eyes, and Wolffe flinches, the first movement he’s made since coming to a stop next to Plo in her hospital room. “Right now, I believe the best we can do is make her comfortable. As her closest kin, it will be up to Master Koon as to when, and if, we remove treatment for the infection and move fully to ensuring her a peaceful passing.” 

“Thank you,” Kailem eventually says when no one else responds or moves. Sariel nods, and steps out of the room.

***

It’s quiet and dark in the room as Plo pulls the door closed again, quietly settling into the chair next to her bed. He settles his hand over hers, and tries not to think about how the suction on the other side of the bed is pulling the black substance of infection out of her leg. 

“I do not know what path to take. Meditation has offered no clear paths, and I am unable to truly remove my emotions from this decision.” 

Plo is not surprised when, a little over an hour later, the door opens and Wolffe steps in. He slowly sits down on her other side. 

“I do not know what to do,” Plo tells him. Wolffe swallows, and—even in the dark light—Plo can see the tears shining in his eyes. 

“I don’t either,” Wolffe says, reaching forward and wrapping his hand around hers, gently lifting it off the bed and pressing his lips against her knuckles. It makes something twist in Plo’s stomach, and something lurches in the left side of his chest. He doesn’t want his Padawan to die. And he doesn’t want his Commander to be left alone, either. Well, Wolffe isn’t  _ his _ Commander, hasn't been in a long time. He technically is, by assignment, but Plo has never been blind to his Padawan or the group of clones he considers his sons, much the same way she considers Kailem her son. 

“I do not want her to die, but I worry it is cruel to force her to stay here when she may wish to return to the Force, to let go of the pain I’m sure she must be in.” 

Wolffe takes a very long time to respond. In the silence that his thoughts leave the machine under the bed makes a horrible sucking noise, and more black infection drains out of her leg and into the container. 

“I do not want her to be forced to keep living in pain. I don’t want her to have to do anything she doesn’t want to. But I also cannot live with the guilt of giving up on her. Who says she isn’t  _ fighting _ ? You know her arguably better than anyone. You  _ know _ how strong and stubborn and determined she was both on the battlefield and in life. I can’t give up on her, not when we haven’t even given her a shot.” Wolffe’s declaration ends softly, with tears spilling over. The Commander lifts one of his hands to wipe furiously at the display of what Wolffe always assumed was weakness. 

“It is quite a brave and frightening and strange thing to show emotion to another person, to let them know who you are. And, as you and your brothers must learn, it is not a bad thing to feel or to do.” Wolffe looks across her bed at Plo. The Jedi Master is not looking at Wolffe, still staring at his Padawan. 

“She always told us that,” Wolffe murmurs. 

“Yes.  _ She _ was the one who taught  _ me _ that,” Plo admits in the quiet of the hospital room. Both men know what needs to be done although neither want to acknowledge it. Wolffe glances at the clock. 0400. 

“Kailem’s trials start in three hours.” 

***

It’s mostly silent in the hospital room. Wolffe can hear several distinct sounds. 

The harsh rasp of the ventilator. 

The quiet hum of the IVs as the solutions drip into the tubes. 

The rush of air through the ventilation shafts. 

And of course the beeps of the ventilator as Sariel shuts it down and oh-so-carefully pulls the tube out of her throat. Wolffe tightens his hand on Kailem’s shoulder where the young man is sitting next to her, holding her hand. 

It’s a long, agonizing sixty-three seconds before her body kicks into gear and hastily, sloppily, lurches a massive breath of air into her lungs. 

Her heart rate jumps up to five beats per minute, and Wolffe hears Sariel let out a slow breath. 

“She’s off the ventilator. She’s still being given antibiotics, intravenous nutrition, and adequate fluids. At this point in time, it’s all up to her,” Sariel tells them. 

“Thank you,” Kailem tells her. The healer nods and steps out of the room. 

“She’s a fighter,” Wolffe says because he can’t think of anything else to say that doesn’t sound like giving up on her. 

“It is the will of the Force,” Kailem says. 

Long, slow, quiet, and agonizing minutes pass before Plo tells Kailem they must leave for his trials. 

Wolffe stays in the room alone, on a boat sinking in an ocean of his guilt. It is not a sinking he thinks he wants to survive. 

*** 

Five days later, she isn’t doing better. 

Five days later, Kailem passes his trials. 

Five days later, Kailem is standing in front of Wolffe in the Commander’s quarters, holding out a braid to him. 

“This is your Padawan braid,” Wolffe states because he’s not sure what else he’s supposed to say. This is supposed to go to  _ her _ , not him. 

“Yes,” Kailem says, strong and steady. He’s unwavering in the face of the storm he’s just survived and the one brewing on the horizon. 

“I married her,” Wolffe confesses and won’t look Kailem in the eye. Wolffe feels guilty, in a way, for shattering Kailem’s image of his Master, but he needs to tell someone. Wolffe thinks Kailem will understand best. After all, he may be the one who understood her best. He knew her in the Force, in their meditations together. It’s been said that parenthood brings out the best and the worst in people, and Kailem knew her as a mother. 

“I know,” Kailem tells him. Wolffe feels his eyes jerk up involuntarily to the young man’s, and Wolffe frowns. 

“How?” It comes out raspy and quiet. The corner of Kailem’s mouth twitches, almost like he wants to smile at Wolffe. 

“Her force signature  _ burned _ when she looked at you, Commander. I’m surprised the whole Jedi Order didn’t know with the way she practically screamed it into the Force. When she was safe on the ship with you it felt like home, the way her force signature sang. But on the battlefield? Then it was a war cry.” Wolffe drops his eyes to the braid that Kailem is still holding out towards him. 

“Why are you giving this to me?” Wolffe asks. 

“Because she taught me about being a Jedi. About morals and compassion and knowledge.  _ You _ taught me about family, what it means, how to create it, how to support it, and receive support from it. And besides, there’s no use in giving a braid to a dying woman,” Kailem tells him. Wolffe still doesn’t open his hand for the braid. 

“If she lives—” 

“She probably won’t,” Kailem says, softly. Wolffe shakes his head, staring at the space between him and Kailem. Physically, there may be less than a foot between them, but right now Wolffe doesn’t feel like he’s been further separated from the young man in front of him since the first time they met. 

“I know,” Wolffe says, and it comes out snappier than he intended. “I know,” he says again, softer. “But if she does, promise me you won’t tell her what happened with the  _ Courageous  _ and Order 66. I’ll do it.” 

“I promise,” Kailem says, grabbing Wolffe’s hand and pressing his Padawan braid into it, curling Wolffe’s fingers around it. “ _ I promise. _ ” 

***

_ Wolffe growls, gritting his teeth as he fires at the droids, acutely aware of where his brothers are, where Kailem is, and how he doesn’t know where his Jedi is.  _

_ “Stay here! Promise!” Wolffe snaps at Kailem, turning his helmet just enough to look at Sinker, who nods at him.  _

_ “I promise,” Kailem grumbles, likely just as eager to go find the other Jedi as Wolffe is.  _

_ Wolffe ducks around the corner and takes off back towards where he saw her last. As Wolffe expected, she’s not there, but the hall is littered with smoking droid remains. Wolffe follows them, and as the sound of a fight gets louder Wolffe starts moving faster, bolting down the hall. He manages to put the brakes on fast enough that he doesn’t collide with the droid parts that soar through the hallway intersection.  _

_ “General!”  _

_ “Wolffe!” She greets, and he steps into the hallway with her, firing at the droids.  _

_ “Kailem?”  _

_ “Sinker.” She nods, focused more on the blaster bolts flying towards her. Between her saber and Wolffe’s blaster, it takes minutes to destroy the droids.  _

_ “I’ll meet you at the landing bay. Make sure it’s clear for you guys so we can get a move on,” she says. Wolffe glances around the hallways, leaning down briefly to press the part of his helmet where his forehead would be against hers, a Keldabe kiss. She’s smiling, mouth twisted and eyes shining when he pulls back.  _

_ “I love you, riduur. I’ll see you on the other side.” She brushes her hand across his chest plate as she leaves. Wolffe spins and takes off back to his brothers.  _

_ They’ve moved down the hallway--the droids destroyed--and Wolffe feels a harsh shock of fear run through him when he notices that there isn’t a shock of green and white among the gray armor.  _

_ “Where’s Kailem?” The whole Wolf Pack freezes, and Wolffe hears Sinker swear.  _

_ “That little shit. We need to stop letting Jedi’s use ‘my lightsaber can stop blaster bolts’ as an excuse for things. Kid said he was gonna take the back.”  _

_ “He and I are gonna have a talk,” Wolffe snarls, feeling fear that he doesn’t want to admit to having curl in his chest.  _

_ “Get to the landing platform. I’ll find him.” Sinker nods, and Wolffe passes them to head back down the hallway. Wolffe swears again, quietly, as he glances around the fourth hallway junction that he’s come to, holding his blaster tight. He’s thinking this has got to be some sort of cosmic joke. He thought he and the kid were making progress after her diplomatic mission when Kailem had come to Wolffe and then ended up staying with him.  _

_ “Commander.” Wolffe whips around at the quiet voice before lurching forward and grabbing Kailem’s left arm--the one not holding his saber--hard, yanking the kid towards him.  _

_ “What the fuck, Kai?” Wolffe snaps. “You promised me you’d stay with Sinker!”  _

_ “I wanted to find her! I was worried!”  _

_ “And what if you had gotten hurt? We wouldn’t have known where to look for you. What would we have told her? ‘Sorry, we lost your Padawan’?”  _

_ “I’m sorry,” Kailem says. Wolffe sighs, loosens his grip on the kid’s arm.  _

_ “Don’t ever do that to me again. Now, stick close. Your Master is probably already at the landing platform and if Sinker and the pack get there without us she’s gonna be pissed.”  _

_ “I’ll stay right with you,” Kailem says. “I promise.” Wolffe doesn’t turn to look at the kid as he sticks his head around the corner, but he raises an eyebrow.  _

_ “Start workin’ on that, Kai,” Wolffe mutters. Kailem grins, siddling close to the Commander as they walk, quickly down the halls.  _

_ *** _

She goes in for surgery for the second time in twenty-seven days after the  _ Courageous  _ crashed. As Sariel has come to expect, Kailem, Wolffe, and Plo are all there when Sariel comes out to update them. 

“We had to take some more tissue and bone, but it looks as if the infection is healing. She’s fighting. If she’s lucky, she’ll get to keep her leg. She’s not out of the woods yet, but it’s progress.” 

***

Three days after that, Kailem is sitting with her at four in the morning when she opens her eyes for the first time in almost a month. She smiles at him and closes her eyes again. 

***

She’s been awake for six days. She has, with Sariel and Plo’s help, managed to get into the chair next to her bed and had spent as much time there as possible. 

She’s sitting in it now as Sinker, once again, refuses to tell her what happened with the ship’s crash. Why it crashed, what led up to it, why Wolffe won’t, or hasn’t, see her. 

“You don’t get it,” Sinker whispers, hands twisted tightly together and one foot tapping against the linoleum floor. “I  _ can’t  _ tell you.” She pulls back at that, as his words sink in. 

Wolffe must have died. He must have. That’s the only reason no one would tell her, right? She’s healing, so she must be fragile, they're saying. We can’t tell her yet. She glances at her hands, thinks of the wedding she and Wolffe had hidden away in the dark behind 79’s. How he promised to get them wedding rings when the war was over. She closes her eyes, swallows the lump in her throat. 

“Of course,” she tells Sinker. “I’m sorry I keep asking.” Sinker lets out a slow breath, and nods. 

“I’ll come by tomorrow. Physical Therapy is going to be here soon.” She nods, tries to smile at him but it looks a little bit too much like paint on a mask. 

***

Her quarters are cold when the door swishes open, and the sound her crutches make seems so loud in the small space. The door sweeps closed behind her, and she slowly makes her way to the bed, easing herself down to sit on it. 

Through the thin, loose pants that she’s wearing she can see the brace on her left leg. She can’t see the bandages, the stitches, and gauze underneath. She can’t see that she’s not missing her patella, that half of her knee joint is metal, that the tendons have been eroded and moved, and that she’ll have to live with the pain and agony of that for the rest of her life. 

She might be able to get off crutches sometimes if she’s good about her physical therapy the therapist had told her. She glances around the room, at the empty walls and empty space and all the nothing, and she cries. 

She cries over Kailem having grown up, how she couldn’t attend his trials. She cries over having him giving his braid to someone else. She cries over what she must have put him through on Cato Neimoidia. She cries over Plo Koon and how disappointed he’ll be when she walks away from the Jedi Order. 

And she cries for Wolffe. For the amazing  _ man _ that she married. She had always imagined a future for them. A little cabin on Naboo, probably. Wolffe would want property that he could work on. He’d want space from people and sun. She had been willing to give him that, to give him  _ anything _ . And now that picture-perfect idealism lays shattered around her in the empty space of her quarters. How could she ever assume that she’d survive a war and somehow manage to fill this emptiness? War only takes. It takes and takes and takes, consuming lives and resources and planets and safety like a gluttonous beast that will never be satisfied. 

And it takes lives. It collects them, rips them away from men and women, children, soldiers, and civilians alike. All souls taste the same to the machine of war, and it is inconsequential which ones it is taking so long as it is taking. 

War brought Wolffe to her, and it took Wolffe from her. It is the will of the Force. She cries, and--not for the first time since she woke up with the possibility of losing a leg--she questions the Force and the Jedi and herself. 

***

_ Drip.  _

_ Drip.  _

_ Drip.  _

_ At first glance, she thinks the shiny liquid smeared on the wall is engine oil. It’s dark in the low, red emergency lighting. Dark and sticky. But once she gets closer, once she runs her finger tips over it, she knows what it is. Nothing else can be that red.  _

_ Smoke. Overheated blasters. The reeking stench of ship’s fuel.  _

_ She glances around. The ship isn’t wrecked, hasn’t crashed yet. Why yet? Should she be stopping something? The proximity alert is sounding, screaming it’s warning to a seemingly empty hallway. Did everyone get out? _

_ “Wolffe. Kailem.” Her voice sounds like the dying hiss and pop of a fire doused in water.  _

_ Pain. Agony. Flaring across the back of her skull. She reaches up, pressing against it. Was that blood always on her hand?  _

_ “General.” She spins, sees Wolffe walking towards her hands tight around his blaster. She grabs for her lightsaber because Wolffe is raising his blaster. She needs to protect him from whatever he’s aiming at.  _

_ Her lightsaber shatters as her fingers close around it, metal falling away like ash in her hand, kyber crystal pulsing a weak, tepid blue. With it, in the middle of her palm, lies her heart. Where’s Kailem? Why can’t she remember? _

_ “Wolffe.” The word is a bullet dropping into the firing chamber, the safety clicking off on a DC-15. Why is the ship going down? _

_ “Under Order 66, the Jedi are to be executed as traitors of the Republic,” Wolffe says, voice hard and monotone.  _

_ The grey and the red on the walls and the flashes of red emergency lighting spiral together as Wolffe gets closer. She can’t move, can’t step away from him. Her legs are stuck, and her left one is flaring into agony.  _

_ A kaleidoscope of fracturing light and dripping, running. A painting with water sprayed on it.  _

_ Blasters. Engines burning. Screaming, but was it metal or human? The ship jerks, ricocheting off of something much larger than itself. She jerks, collapsing into the wall and screaming at the agony flaring in her leg. She watches as Wolffe’s knees drop to the floor on either side of her waist, as he slowly leans forward over her.  _

_ “Kailem.” The order to a soldier for proof of life, a plea of a mother praying she didn’t outlive her child.  _

_ “He will be executed.” The words are cold, frozen and steady. Each one slicing through her like a knife.  _

_ “You need to get him out,” she says. Agony flares, sparks, explodes, shatters along her leg. Wolffe wraps his hands around her neck, tight, and pushes down. She tries to scream, and nothing comes out.  _

***

The room is still empty when she falls out of bed in her desperate bid to escape the monsters lurking in her mind. She takes a deep breath—takes a slow, dragging look around the room—and begins packing her meager belongings. 

***

“I honestly thought you would have been gone by now.” She glances at Kailem where he’s standing just inside her quarters. She shrugs, gestures for him to come in farther so that the automatic door closes. 

“I would have told you before I left,” she says, smoothing another robe down into her small bag. 

“I know,” he says, sitting next to her bag on the bed. 

“Where are you going?” He asks. 

“Nekara.” 

“You’re going home?” She shakes her head. 

“Nekara may be my planet of birth, but it is hardly my home.” Kailem tilts his head as he watches his former Master dance around the topic with an uncharacteristic nervousness. 

“Whatever it is, tell me,” Kailem urges. She sighs, straightening up and looking at her crutches next to her instead of at him. 

“Why wouldn’t anyone man up and tell me Wolffe was dead to my face?” Kailem jerks as if she slapped him. 

“What?” He asks. 

“That’s why no one will tell me what happened, isn’t it? Everyone’s too worried about me healing, so they won’t tell me that Wolffe died or how the ship crashed.” Kailem lets out a slow breath, and she hates the pain and guilt that flash across Kailem’s face. 

“Master, Wolffe isn’t  _ dead _ . I thought he came to see you.” It’s her turn to jerk back this time, face twisting up as her world fractures again. 

“What did I do to make him hate me?” She voices the question, but Kailem knows it’s rhetorical. He also knows that the problem doesn’t lie with  _ her _ , but with  _ Wolffe _ . 

“He made us promise to let him tell you what happened. I didn’t know he hadn’t—” She flinches and Kailem cuts off. She zips up her bag and turns to her former Padawan. 

“I am so  _ proud  _ of you,” she tells him. Kailem smiles, stands up, and gently wraps his arms around the woman in front of him. 

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he says. She wraps her arms around him and hugs him tight. 

“Thank you.” She still won’t tell Kailem where, exactly, on Nekara she’s going to be, but--when Kailem drops her off at the port--she gives him her comm code, smiling at him before she disappears into the ship. Kailem watches until he can’t see the ship anymore. 

***

A series of three sharp raps against his door is what Kailem is first aware of when he comes out of meditation, and--based on the impatient nature of the second set of three--Kailem assumes that this isn’t the first time the person has knocked. Kailem stands up and opens the door, stepping back to let a  _ furious  _ Commander Wolffe stalk into his quarters. 

“Where is she?” Wolffe snaps. 

“I don’t know. Maybe you should’ve talked to her while she was in the hospital, since you told us not to tell her what happened. Since you wanted to go over it with her. She assumed you died and that’s why none of us would tell her what happened.” Wolffe steps back as if Kailem had punched him, jaw dropping. 

“She assumed I  _ died _ ?” 

“It’s a pretty logical conclusion to draw,” Kailem tells him. Wolffe lets out a slow breath, rakes his hands through his hair. 

“Where did she go?” 

“Nekara,” Kailem says because he’s never seen Commander Wolffe look lost or scared. 

“I’m sorry,” Wolffe says before practically bolting out of the room. 

***

Wolffe shivers in the wind, yanking the jacket Plo gave him tighter around himself as he watches the wind whip foam off the top of the waves. The gravel on the road crunches under his boots, and the ball of nerves in his stomach twists tighter. What’s she going to say to him? What is he going to say to  _ her _ ? 

The small house at the end of the road doesn’t look inhabited, but this is where Wolffe found her. Or at least, this is the most likely place on Nekara. She hadn’t told Kailem where, exactly, on the planet she was going. Hadn’t told Plo either. 

Wolffe wraps his hand tight around Kailem’s Padawan braid in his pocket and takes the two steps onto the porch. The two rocking chairs on the porch make something sharp and painful twist deep in the left side of Wolffe’s chest. The hand not holding onto Kai’s braid reaches up and knocks on the door. 

Wolffe swears he almost cries when she opens the door, her left leg cocked slightly as she leans against the door frame. 

“Wolffe,” she whispers, eyes wide and rapidly filling with tears. He jerks forward across the threshold, hands hovering as uselessly and ineffectively as he always felt his words were. 

She closes the distance for him, reaching out and yanking him into her and stumbling and crashing into his chest. Her fingers are tight in his jacket, and she wraps her arms around him. 

“I’m  _ sorry _ ,” he whispers. She shakes her head, arms tight. “I wasn’t there, and I was an idiot. I’m  _ sorry. _ ” 

“You’re  _ my _ idiot,” She whispers. “Riduur, why won’t anyone tell me what happened?” 

“You deserve to hear it from me,” he says. She pulls back, cupping his jaw and pressing her forehead to his. 

“Kair’ta, tell me,” She says. Wolffe steps back, hooking her arm over his shoulder and gently sweeping her legs out from under her, and kicks the door closed behind him. 

“Wolffe!” She exclaims, and Wolffe can hear the protest building in her chest. 

“No,” Wolffe says, setting her on the couch and sliding to the other end. 

Wolffe can feel her wanting to press, to demand an answer for the questions that Wolffe is sure are running through her head. 

“I don’t remember it, not really. I get disjointed flashes, shards, but none of it makes sense. Kailem told me that you tossed him into a room and locked the blast doors. As for how you ended up—” Wolffe cuts off, shaking his head. Guilt curls in his stomach, pressing against his lungs. 

“It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. It was the chips, wasn’t it?” Wolffe glances at her. “Anakin and Fives were too late,” she says. 

“Minutes too late.” Her face twists, and Wolffe wants to reach out and touch her. 

“Commander Wolffe, I need you to be careful of my leg because it’s rather sore right now. But if you do not kiss me, you’re sleeping on the couch tonight,” she tells him. Wolffe jerks forward, pressing his lips to hers. Hard. She whimpers, shifting under him, and her hands are tight in his jacket as she pulls him down to her. 

“Riduur,” she gasps as Wolffe shifts to suck a hickey underneath her jaw. 

“Kair’ta, ni kar'tayl gar darasuum,” Wolffe rasps. 

“I love you, too,” she whispers. “Stay. Please.” Wolffe presses his forehead against hers, shuddering as the weight of all that he almost lost crashes into his chest. 

“Yes. Anything you want.” 

***

He’s standing in the kitchen, staring at the coffee machine and watching the dark, caffeinated liquid drip into the pot. 

The morning light is weak—tepid—as it tries to break through the storm clouds building on the horizon. It shatters as it crosses through the shutters, collapsing on the wooden floor inches from Wolffe’s feet as if it can’t muster the strength to reach him. 

Sometimes, Wolffe feels like it will never reach him. 

Wolffe knows that she often feels that way, too. She feels broken and shattered despite her progress. Wolffe supposes that these burdens are something they will always carry. 

He turns when he hears her and watches as she gently picks her way through the furniture, balancing and hopping until she gets to the kitchen. Wolffe reaches his hands out, and she gently lets herself crash into his chest, wrapping her arms tight around him and splaying her hands over his back. He forgoes a shirt when sleeping, and he hadn’t bothered putting one on when he came out to start coffee. 

“Storms are rolling in,” she murmurs. Wolffe glances down at her bare legs. She’s wearing underwear and one of his shirts, and he can see the multitude of scars curling around her knee and leg. Wolffe thinks of all of the storms that they’ve already weathered. 

“We’ve survived worse,” he says. She hums, half asleep leaning against his chest in their warm, comfortable kitchen. 

“Yes,” she tells him. “We have.” 

***

Wolffe hadn’t gone with her to her physical therapy today. He’d had an errand to run, and--as he gingerly sits next to her on the couch--he wishes he would have. 

“ _ Jetti _ ,” Wolffe murmurs, rubbing a hand over her stomach. She reaches out and settles her hand over his. 

“Muscle cramps,” she murmurs. Wolffe brushes his hand over her legs and feels the tightness and the painful tenseness that comes with the cramping. 

“Stay here, I’ll be right back,” Wolffe murmurs, leaning forward to kiss her forehead before standing up and heading into their bedroom. 

The old, wooden floorboards creak, and Wolffe doesn’t jump like he used to. He grabs the lavender lotion and heads back out to the couch. She smiles at him, soft and warm as she gently lifts her legs up so he can sit down. 

“How was physical therapy?” He asks. 

“Good progress. Cramps happened after. I can officially ditch the crutches though,” she tells him. Wolffe grins at her, reaches into his sweatshirt pocket, wraps his fingers around the box before slipping it out and setting it next to him, grabbing the lotion instead. He’ll give her the ring he promised her in the dark alley behind 79’s years ago when her leg isn’t in agony. 

Wolffe gets some lotion in his hand, and starts working on the tense muscles in her legs, gently digging his fingers into her calf and thigh and trying to work out some of the tension. She sighs, head tilting as she watches him with a soft expression on her face. 

“Thank you,” she tells him. Wolffe smiles at her, listening to the waves crashing against the sand. The sun scatters across the floor. 

“Plo and Kailem are coming for dinner in three days. They’ll be nearby for Jedi business and want to stop on the way back to Coruscant.” 

“Good. Do you want me to cook?” Wolffe asks. She hums. When Wolffe looks up, her eyes are closed. He keeps massaging her legs, trying to get the muscles to relax. The way she’s not shivering as much makes Wolffe believe the pain is slowly lessening. 

“Do you mind?” Her voice is soft--gentle and calming. 

“No, I like cooking,” he says. She hums, reaching out to brush her hand over his arm. 

“Thank you.” He smiles at her, relishing in the safety and the sun and the salt floating through the windows on a breeze. 

***

I have something for you,” he says, brushing his left hand down her side. He crowds her against the counter as she waits for the coffee. 

“For me?” She asks, leaning back against his chest. Wolffe notices that she’s bearing weight on both legs, and it makes something warm curl in his chest. She’s making a lot of progress, and her leg rarely hurts anymore. It gets sore, yes, but it hasn’t been crippling in weeks. 

“I admit I’ve had it for a while and could never find a good time,” he murmurs. She spins to look at him, and Wolffe bends down just enough to grab the backs of her thighs and hoist her onto the counter next to the coffee machine. He pulls the little black box out and opens it to reveal the two, silver rings sitting inside. She grins, wide and happy. 

“You did promise me a ring after the war ended, didn’t you?” She asks. Wolffe rolls his eyes, setting the box on the counter and taking out her ring. He catches her left hand as she offers it to him, letting him slide the ring onto her finger. She grins at it before grabbing his ring out of the box and gently sliding it onto his. 

“Much more romantic than 79’s alley,” she says. Wolffe laughs, warm and full. “Sex before coffee?” She asks him. Wolffe rolls his eyes, kissing her. 

“If I knew giving you a ring would have gotten you in bed, I would have given you one much sooner,” Wolffe says. She laughs, hands on his ribs as he brushes his hands up and down the outside of her thighs. 

“All you gotta do is ask, cyare,” she says. Wolffe grins and kisses her, putting one hand on the inside of her knee and slowly sliding his hand up towards the apex of her thighs. She moans when he slips his hand in her pants. 

“Bedroom,” she rasps. 

“Yes, ma’am,” Wolffe murmurs. 

***

“I’m pregnant.” Wolffe swears the world  _ stops _ . He thinks he would have stayed there, frozen, forever had he not noticed the  _ fear _ slowly welling up in her eyes. Wolffe steps between her legs and plants his hands on the counter by her hips, pressing his forehead against hers. 

“A baby,” Wolffe says. She exhales shakily and grabs his forearms. She takes another deep breath and slowly lets it out. Another breath. This one is steady and strong. 

“Yes,” she says, steely power under a calm, assured exterior. Wolffe huffs out a noise he thinks is laughter, and there're tears in his eyes as he presses his face into the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Tears well up in his eyes. She gently pulls his head out of her shoulder, hands cradling his jaw. It always amazed him that such a soft, compassionate woman could be so  _ ferocious  _ and  _ terrifying  _ on the battlefield. Warmth and safety wrapped around power and strength. 

He always assumed that if someone had thrown a punch at her they’d break their hand when it landed. Now, he clings to that steady, confident woman who always seems to know how to point her compass north. He presses his forehead to hers, pulling one hand away from its steel grip on the counter to press, gently and reverently, against her lower abdomen. 

“We can do this,” he says hesitantly and watches her watch him. She grins, wide and warm and  _ happy _ . Happy here with him and their  _ baby _ . A little family all of their own design. 

Weapons aren’t supposed to find peace. Wolffe has been told that, had  _ learned  _ that long ago. And yet here he is, with tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, smiling at her where she’s sitting on the counter in their little kitchen with its oak wood floors and obnoxiously cheery yellow cabinets that Wolffe has grudgingly come to like. They have silver wedding rings on left hands, and a precious baby—new life—cradled in between them. 

Maybe, Wolffe was never a weapon. Weapons don’t find peace, and yet here he is: at peace and happy. He kisses her, sunlight falling around them as if even the sun itself cannot compete with the shining, burning fire of love and happiness and trust that exists between the Jedi and her Commander. 


End file.
